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Mira Murati, OpenAI’s chief technology officer who served as interim CEO during the failed coup attempt against founder Sam Altman last year, is leaving the company.

In a message shared with the startup’s employees on Wednesday, she said: “After careful consideration, I have made the difficult decision to leave OpenAI.”

This is the latest blow to the Microsoft-backed AI startup, which has seen several high-profile departures this year, including founders John Schulman and Ilya Sutskever. Schulman has moved to rival Anthropic, while Sutskever has started his own company aimed at developing “safe” AI models.

Only two of OpenAI’s 11 founders remain after Greg Brockman announced in August that he would take a leave of absence until the end of the year.

Murati, 35, spent six and a half years at OpenAI, leading the company’s efforts to develop ChatGPT as a standalone product, building on the technical breakthroughs made with GPT, the underlying large language model. She also oversaw the releases and improvements of the company’s image generator Dall-E and AI code generator Codex.

Last November, she was named interim CEO after OpenAI’s board fired Altman for alleged lack of candor. Murati remained in the position for four days until Altman returned following intense pressure from investors and employees. He was later cleared to return to the board following an independent review of his conduct.

Murati’s departure is a reminder of the lasting scars this incident has left on the fast-growing San Francisco-based startup. The company was originally founded as a nonprofit dedicated to making artificial general intelligence – which aims to replicate human intelligence – benefit all of humanity. In 2019, it changed its structure and became a limited-margin company, allowing it to raise large amounts of capital from companies like Microsoft, which invested $13 billion.

The ChatGPT maker has become one of the most valuable companies in Silicon Valley, raising more than $6 billion at a $150 billion valuation, several people familiar with the matter said.

At the same time, the company is in talks about changing its corporate structure to be more investor-friendly and has launched new products, including new AI models such as o1, which it says has the ability to reason logically and additional language functions.

“There is never an ideal time to leave a place you cherish, but this moment feels right,” Murati wrote. She said she was leaving because she wanted to “create time and space to do my own exploration.” She added that her main focus would be to “ensure a smooth transition.”

“Even though I am no longer in the trenches with you, I will continue to keep my fingers crossed for all of you,” she wrote.

In October, a month before last year’s leadership turmoil, Sutskever and Murati were two of the senior executives who brought their concerns about Altman to the board, three people familiar with the matter said. Their concerns included Altman’s leadership style, which they believed was undermining and turning people against each other, one of the informants said. Murati and others felt his actions created a toxic climate and contributed to the board’s decision to fire the CEO and the means by which it did so, they added.

When Altman was fired by the board, Murati was notified and appointed as interim CEO. But the very next day, Sutskever and Murati were negotiating Altman’s return.

Both stayed with OpenAI after he was reinstated as CEO. As the startup tried to recover from the instability, a dispute arose over the company’s commercialization and the pressure to develop products that could be monetized, former and current employees said.

“Overall, the company has definitely become more of a regular technology company over time, more product and profit focused and less altruistic,” said a former employee.

“The nuclear researchers are still personally loyal to Sam and are in it because they want to build (artificial general intelligence), not because they want to make money.”

Another current employee lamented the loss of a female leader at OpenAI, as women are typically underrepresented in the AI ​​field, especially in technical leadership positions.

In March, Murati said it was “disheartening to witness the previous board attempting to scapegoat me with anonymous and misleading claims in a last-ditch effort to save face in the media.” She told staff she had a “strong and productive relationship” with Altman and was “not shy” about giving him feedback.

Murati and Sutskever declined to comment. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Murati joined the company in 2018 after previously working at augmented reality start-up Magic Leap and electric car maker Tesla.

Altman thanked Murati for her contributions in response to her announcement. “It’s hard to overstate how much Mira has meant to OpenAI, our mission, and to all of us personally,” he said. “I am enormously grateful to her for what she has helped us build and achieve, but most of all, I feel personal gratitude for her support and love through all the hard times.”

Additional reporting by George Hammond